Dave Grohl guest-hosted Jimmy Kimmel’s Halloween show on Tuesday night, and it was one of the most bizarre hours on TV that you will ever see. Grohl was dressed up as current-day David Letterman, complete with tooth gap and big white beard, and the costume was so well done that it was freaky and a bit disorienting hearing Grohl’s voice coming out of it.

The Foo Fighters’ front man was surprisingly good as the host of the program since it’s got to be a very difficult and stressful thing for any rookie to run a late night TV talk show. But he handled it with his trademark, regular-guy ease, almost as if the Letterman costume came with its own talk show skills. A segment with Kirsten Bell dressed up as Magnum P.I. was very funny, and ended up with the two of them performing a mash-up of “Do You Want To Build a Snowman” from the film Frozen and Metallica’s “Enter Sandman”, featuring Grohl-as-Letterman on drums.

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But the real highlight of the show was an interview and performance with Alice Cooper. Of course, every day is Halloween for the 69-year-old Cooper, and on this occasion he dialed up the camp knob to 11, giving the performance an almost nostalgic feel for a time when people actually took this stuff seriously.

He was there ostensibly to promote his new album Paranormal, but the performance was a medley of two of his early 70s classics, “Ballad Of Dwight Fry” and “Killer”. Cooper delivered his well-honed schtick with aplomb, straight-jacketed and mugging for camera close-ups. But he can still bring the vocals convincingly, and backed by the Foos I was surprised at how great it sounded.

I still can’t get over how freakish it was seeing Grohl-as-Letterman churning on the guitar, and it made the punchline of the performance – Cooper going into the guillotine and coming out with a very lifelike Dave Grohl severed head – that much sweeter. As Letterman himself used to say, that’s the way it’s done, folks.

Today, people say Rock is dead, but Rich says bullshit to that. “We’ve got people like Jack White, Beck and Jeff Tweedy who are worthy carriers of the torch that was lit so long ago. Taking the big tent perspective, I would argue that Rock is as vital today as it’s ever been.” You can reach him at rich@rocknuts.net.